from Jon Miller, Associate Professor of English, The University of Akron, Ohio, USA.

Slave gravesite on former sugar plantation found

Matt Probasco reports for the Associated Press that "researchers from Denmark and the U.S. Virgin Islands want to unearth up to 50 skeletons" found on private property in St. Croix.

More than 100,000 enslaved Africans, mostly from what is now Ghana,
arrived in the Danish West Indies from 1617 to 1807, according to Myron
Jackson, director of the U.S. Virgin Islands' historical preservation
office. Many were sold at slave markets and shipped to the American
colonies while thousands remained as the property of Danish colonists.

From the time they were big enough to work, slaves cut sugar cane
and picked cotton, tobacco and sweet potatoes in the Caribbean heat,
Jackson said. When severe drought hit in 1725 and 1733, some plantation
owners starved their work force rather than pay for food to be shipped
to the islands.

David Brion Davis, a Yale University historian, notes that Caribbean
slaves died much faster than those on the mainland and had a lower
birthrate because of the harsh environment and labor conditions.

"Sugar production was a very, very taxing — almost lethal — kind of
occupation," he said, noting that many lost limbs in machines.

Slaves who plotted revolt, tried to escape or threatened a white man
were punished by 150 lashes, brandings on their forehead, or having a
leg or ear chopped off. Others were hanged or tortured to death.

Here's a link to a Yahoo! news edition of this report. We might compare Davis's summary of slave life in the Caribbean to that described in James Grainger's 1764 poem, "The Sugar Cane."